RAW MATERIAL BRAND IDENTITY
The Brief FdA Design for Graphic Communication 2008/10 & 2009/11 Project title: Raw Material Branding Start date: Monday 11th January 2010 Summative Deadline: Monday 8th February 2010 10.30am - 1.00pm Co-ordinating Tutor: David Sims d.sims@lcc.arts.ac.uk Introduction: Raw Material are a Brixton based charity who work with people aged between 14-25 providing access and opportunities to engage in music, media, arts and new technology education, training and production. You can glean more of an idea of what they do here: http://www.raw-material.org The Brief: You are asked to create a complete brand identity for this organisation that reflects the personality and ambitions of this exciting music and media based charity. Your brand identity must be applicable across a wide array of platforms such as print based materials, web and digital and live events. All these avenues of communication design are important to Raw Material. Raw Material are very open to any ideas that will help them to successfully continue to fulfil their goals and aims, inspire the people working with them and communicate to a wider audience who could be interested in becoming involved with the organisation. This is a live project and the Raw Material team will be involved in the evaluation of workin-progress and they will pick final ideas to be taken forward an applied. Key words are: Engaging, Diversity, Energy, Professional, Slick, Urban, Interactive, Progression, Enterprise, Music, Media, Community, Evolving What we are expecting: Ideas that can be applied across a wide range of media (print, screen etc) Ideas and designs that can be used by Raw Material after you have finished Ideas that represent the energy and goals of Raw Material Work that is inclusive and inspiring to the target audience and participants Professional conduct when showing work to the Raw Material team What we don’t want to see: Derivative, clichÊd work that is a surface style and no substance Ideas that do not communicate to any of the stakeholders on any level Work that is insensitive to the subject Work that is rushed and done 2 days before the deadline Ideas that cannot be used by the Raw Material team after you have finished Starting Questions: How can you capture the energy and essence of the organisation? How can you communicate this to others? How can you design a brand identity system that Raw Material can use after you have completed your involvement? How can you represent the diverse activities of this organisation in a consistent manner? How can your ideas be adapted and applied over a broad range of applications? How will this project be taught? This project will run over 5 weeks and there will be a mandatory to attend session each week. The first all day session will help you define the brief further and create a personal plan of action. The following 3 sessions will be opportunities for you to share your work in progress with your peers and tutor, offering and receiving valuable feedback. The final 5th session will be an assessment session where you will present your completed project and research work to the Raw Material team.
The brief introduced the Raw Material company and what it did and what they needed – “to create a complete brand identity for the organization that reflects the personality and ambition of this exciting music and media based charity”. It outlined the different media Raw Material would be applying the brand to and what sort of key words had been indentified as being relevant to the company. The brief made clear that the brand had to appeal to a young but broad audience, from 14 – 25 year olds and had to be open and inclusive. This meant not having a visual style that was too tied down to a musical genre, a gender or culture.
Raw Material Brand Identity
Research
For research I explored a variety methods and resources. I collected examples of logos, images related to the audience, read articles and books, examined logos for companies similar to Raw Material or operating with the same audience. I also paid the Raw Material building a visit so I could see what went on there and what kind of people went there.
Raw Material Brand Identity
Raw Material
I visited the Raw Material building and met the managing director, Tim Brown. He showed me around the building, the different classrooms, studios and the equipment at Raw Material. He explained how the charity used to be based in Kings Cross and that they had relocated to Brixton a number of years ago. The people who came to Raw Material, were a diverse mix and there was a good mix of different talents and styles. The next week, Tim came to LCC and gave a short presentation on Raw Material and what they did. He explained that the company was in it’s third iteration, having had it’s funding cut and substantial changes to it’s organization and services offered. The charity once organized production of documentary films and music recording in
The Raw Material website layout and visuals are inspired by street art, the website is dark and somewhat aggressive. Though the website isn’t that old, the style hasn’t aged well. The images of classes in progress were more useful as they showed people engaged in activity.
Raw Material Brand Identity
Audience
I looked at examples of street art, urban fashion, illustrations, record covers, contemporary graphics and anything else I knew resonated with the target audience. I collected these images and created a mood board which helped me to establish in my mind the target audience. You can see here that the graphics are predominantly bold and strong, with high contrast and impact. They are often black on white. The lettering
of the street art and logos is also bold, strong and crisp. Colours are vibrant, again with high contrast. The mood board gave an overall image of what styles may be appropriate, but I wanted to be careful not to be too influenced by these visuals as that would produce a result that was clichĂŠ.
The target audience was defined by being urban and young. I gathered examples of graphics, from record sleeves to t shirt designs, that I felt were relevant to the audience. I gathered examples of typography in the same vein and created a mood board with these examples. I then analyzed the examples to see what sort of visuals were relevant.
Raw Material Brand Identity
Logos Looking at logos from street fashion brands, the logos are bold and crisp, with subtle but distinctive featurings. They work well at many sizes and are instantly recognisable. The typefaces are squat and fat/meaty and work very well in just black. From looking at these logos (and other fashion brands) I began to think about a typeface that was bold and strong and had the resonance of these types of logos.
Fat and bold line thickness. Also similar to the line weights of street art.
From looking at who the audiences were I went on to look at logos that the audience may consume, especially those of fashion labels. I analyzed the logos and made notes on what type choices were made, what styles were used and why. I looked at books such as Los Logos and the portfolios of identity designers to gather examples of logos for organizations similar or relevant to Raw Material. These observations informed the development of the identity for Raw Material.
I looked through books like Las Logos for inspiration, especially through the music identity parts of the book. The ideas were interesting and clever. The black and white logos I felt were the strongest and reinforced my earlier idea that black and bold was a good way to go to create a strong brand for the company.
Raw Material Brand Identity
Brands
I looked at how brands kept a consistent tone of voice at all their touch points and how the brand worked together over many medium. The brand applications are interesting, in the Barbican’s communications there is obviously a well thought out branding guide, all of its communications are high quality and sit well with communications from other parts. I began looking at ideas of how to present the final brand guidelines and files. I began thinking about record sleeve that housed the guidelines and dvd with files, to give the project an extra edge of interest.
Beyond the logos I looked at how brand identities were employed consistently across a range of applications. I researched online, read books, magazines and also collected examples from museums or companies. By looking at how brand identities were applied I came up with ideas for how Raw Material could be branded and how powerful a consistent identity could be.
Wolff Olins make quality brands and really nice applications, which made me think that the logo itself wasn’t really the most important thing, but how it was applied really made the difference. For NEW MUSEUM they created a logo that was hugely versatile across a range of applications.
Raw Material Brand Identity
Symbols
I saw this poster a couple of days after seeing the band on the Jules Holland Show and it struck me as interesting that the ad campaign would forgo any further info other than the bands logo. It was interesting because it relied on people knowing about the logo - an ad that relies on you knowing the logo is a departure from the norm. It got me thinking about symbols and how the RAW MATERIAL logo could mimic this use of a logo on it’s own possibly in it’s own marketing.
Inspired by a poster for the band ‘The XX’ on the tube, I began to look at how symbols and signifiers had been used by many groups or societal tribes to announce their presence. Throughout history symbols and logos have been used to identify diverse subjects, such as ethnicity, political ideology, gender and sexual preference. The idea of a symbol being able to unite a group of people and encapsulate something that they all were united by was interesting – abstract graphic marks are memorable but also imbued with meaning.
I gathered examples of symbols from history, like Kilroy Was Here and the Christian Fish, Black Power, Anarchy and had a think about what they meant. To me they were symbols of solidarity, people who were on the outside making marks on walls so they could be seen by others, symbols of solidarity that could provide comfort. The term brand loyalty isn’t new, it seems to follow on from these earlier symbols and the following they had.
Raw Material Brand Identity
Concept
I developed a concept based on findings in my research, symbolism, technology and inclusion. The concept was that a graphic mark could act as a symbol of pride for the students of Raw Material, a charity set up to aid disadvantaged youths learn skills and gain confidence. It could encapsulate the technology, inclusion and pride that Raw Material offered. For me the graphic mark had to be a circle. In my visit to the Raw Material studio I saw that many of the technologies were circular. And the circle encapsulates it’s own space, lending itself to the idea of inclusion. More importantly, a circle is a strong, simple and geometric shape that would make the basis for a memorable symbol.
Raw Material Brand Identity
Development RAW MATERIAL
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I looked at constructing a logo from circles that also represented a form of technology used at RAW MATERIAL. I tried records, cds, hard drives and speakers, decks etc but not to much success, the logos were very rough and undeveloped at this stage.
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I changed between some fonts, avant garde bold, helvetica bold, akzidenz grotesk condensed. The typefaces didn’t really convey the sense of energy I was thinking of though.
I began developing the ideas using circles as a basis. I sketched ideas and continually made notes in notepads. The ideas at first were based on making the circle represent the technology used at Raw Material. These included: records, cds, hard drives, camera lenses, pixels, decks etc. A circle representing a cd or record was the strongest representation that didn’t need to be forced. I also began looking at different typefaces. I was conscious not to use type that I felt was too clichÊ, like blackletter being hip hop or something like Eurostile to represent techno music. Part of the brief was to make the brand inclusive, so I wanted to stay away from type that had too strong associations with genres of music and the culture behind them.
I kept coming back to the circle and making it look like a record. Records and decks are still very indicative of urban hip hop and other urban music genres and from looking at the website and previous designs this was definitely the way RAW MATERIAL wanted to be seen.
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Raw Material Brand Identity
Develpoment
cont.
I refined the circle logo until I was happy with it. It came to encompass a few different ideas for the concept. The unity, the independence of the circle as a graphic mark and the abstract representation of a record. I experimented with different patterns in the circle, toying with the idea of sub brands. The pattern here is meant to represent the interlace of a television screen, for the film production side of RAW MATERIAL.
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I refined the idea to a circle and I looked at the possibility of having the circle change according to the different media of Raw Material. I experimented with variations of the circle symbol as well as the type face and positioning of elements. I didn’t like the formality of the Swiss fonts I was using so I began to look at other san serif fonts. I narrowed these down to Futura Book Bold and Akzidenz Grotesk BQ Super Bold, liking the bold friendly faces.
I cut my choices down to two typefaces, Futura or Akzidenz Grotesk. The fatter faces seemed to have more energy to me.
Looking at how the black circle looked when surrounded by coloured ones, possible sub brands.
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SWISS 721 BOLD
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Raw Material Brand Identity
Final Logo
I decided that this was the final logo, having spent too much time tweaking it, it was time to decide and begin the production of the brand guidelines and applications.
Raw Material Brand Identity
Production
I produced two booklets to accompany the logo files - one was a brand guideline, the other was a small booklet of brand applications as well as suggestions for how to use the circle symbol in marketing in the future.